THE RAREY HOMESTEAD
Only pictures, now remain of the John Solomon Rarey homestead. The
home of this great horse trainer was demolished a short time
ago to make room for a new Groveport school building.
John Solomon Rarey, noted horse trainer, before he was twelve years old, had shown that he could coax wild colts in pasture to come up to him and let him put halters on them. This gift of horsemanship led him, in due time, to issue a book of instructions which he sold at county fairs.
When thirty years of age, Rarey went to England and gave an exhibition before Queen Victoria and the royal family at Windsor Castle. Fame and fortune came to him almost overnight. The Queen and Prince Consort headed a class of more than a thousand men and women who paid ten guineas each for instructions. Rarey then went to France, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Norway, Egypt, Turkey, and Arabia, everywhere achieving the same uninterrupted success. He returned to the United States in 1860, bringing with him the English thoroughbred stallion Cruiser, a notoriously vicious horse that had never submitted to rule except by Rarey. When he landed in New York he was received as a world figure and was acclaimed as such in his tour of the country which followed.
In 1862 his health began to fail and he returned to Groveport, building for his mother a spacious mansion, incorporating in it the modest farm house in which he had been borm. It soon became one of the most noted homes in Franklin County.
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